• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“What do you think of that, Sancho?” said Don Quixote. “Are there any enchantments that can prevail against true courage? Enchanters may deprive me of good fortune, but of spirit and courage, never!”

Sancho gave the men the escudos, the driver yoked his team, the lion keeper kissed Don Quixote’s hands for the favor received and promised to recount that valiant feat to the king himself when he arrived in court.

“If, by chance, His Majesty asks who performed the deed, tell him it was The Knight of the Lions; from this day forth, I want the name I have had until now, The Knight of the Sorrowful Face, to be changed, altered, turned, and transformed into this, and in doing so, I follow the ancient usage of knights errant, who changed their names whenever they wished, or whenever it seemed appropriate.”

The wagon went on its way, and Don Quixote, Sancho, and the Gentleman of the Green Coat continued on theirs.

In all this time Don Diego de Miranda had not said a word but was careful to observe and note the actions and words of Don Quixote, who seemed to him a sane man gone mad and a madman edging toward sanity. He had not yet heard anything about the first part of Don Quixote’s history; if he had read it, he would no longer have been astonished by his actions and words, for he would have known the nature of his madness, but since he did not, he sometimes thought him sane and sometimes mad, because his speech was coherent, elegant, and eloquent and his actions nonsensical, reckless, and foolish. And he said to himself:

“What greater madness can there be than putting on a helmet full of curds and believing that enchanters had softened one’s head? And what greater temerity and foolishness than to attempt to do battle with lions?”

Don Quixote drew him away from these thoughts and this soliloquy by saying:

“Who can doubt, Señor Don Diego de Miranda, that in the opinion of your grace I am a foolish and witless man? And it would not be surprising if you did, because my actions do not attest to anything else. Even so, I would like your grace to observe that I am not as mad or as foolish as I must have seemed to you. A gallant knight is pleasing in the eyes of his king when, in the middle of a great plaza, he successfully thrusts his lance into a fierce bull; a knight is pleasing when, dressed in shining armor, he enters the field and contends in lively jousts before the ladies; and all those knights who engage in military exercises, or seem to, entertain and enliven and, if one may say so, honor the courts of their princes; but above and beyond all these, the best seems to be the knight errant, who travels wastelands and desolate places, crossroads and forests and mountains, seeking dangerous adventures and attempting to bring them to a happy and fortunate conclusion, his sole purpose being to achieve glorious and lasting fame. The knight errant who helps a widow in some deserted spot, seems better, I say, than a courtier knight flattering a damsel in the city. All knights have their own endeavors: let the courtier serve the ladies, and lend majesty to the court of his king with livery; let him sustain poor knights with the splendors of his table, arrange jousts, support tourneys, and show himself to be great, liberal, magnanimous, and, above all, a good Christian, and in this manner he will meet his precise obligations. But let the knight errant search all the corners of the world; let him enter into the most intricate labyrinths; attempt the impossible at each step he takes; resist in empty wastelands the burning rays of the sun in summer, and in winter the harsh rigors of freezing winds; let him not be dismayed by lions, or frightened by monsters, or terrified by dragons; searching for these and attacking those and vanquishing them all are his principal and true endeavors.

I, then, since it is my fortune to be counted in the number of knights errant, cannot help but attack all things that seem to me to fall within the jurisdiction of my endeavors; and so, it